#1: Blogs

There is a constant debate on whether or not blogs are considered social media but I feel like blogging is a thing that heavily influenced the idea of social media and how it started. Blogging existed before the technology of smartphones became widely available. You could even say that blogging is one of the oldest forms of social media. Before Instagram, people do use blogs as a journal to document and share their lives, but you don’t see as many people blogging about their daily lives anymore. We have all moved on to social media apps that are much more convenient for us as they match our fast paced lifestyle. However, that doesn’t mean that blogs are no longer relevant today.

Adrian Miles explores the use of blogs in media education, which I find that it does make learning more interesting and effective. Unlike Instagram, blogs can be used for things that has heavier/ more wordy content. There’re many perks mentioned in the reading to using blogs for education, but for now I’ll mention a few I personally find most useful. Firstly, blogs can be highly organised. By default, they are archived by date and you can easily categorise them. This saves students time needed to organise their notes. Secondly, the comment section in the blog promotes interactive learning as it allows both student and teacher to provide constructive feedback/ start a conversation to generate ideas. Blogs can now be like social media- but for learning! Last but not least, the ability to customise the appearance of the blog. Now, this may not seem important to many but for visually-driven students like myself (I’m a communication design student), this function really motivates my interest in learning.

Of course, there are some precautions to be made when managing a blog. The reading states “The first and most obvious one is that a blog is a public document, and it is written with the assumption that it has readers… This publicness means that care needs to be exercised:”. We have to be responsible for what we choose to put up on our blogs and social media. One can easily spread false news on Instagram. Despite how efficient and effective Instagram can be at marketing and sharing information, it is important to remain ethical.

References

  1. Miles, A. (2006). Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.. 41st ed.
week 1

nella • July 24, 2018


Next Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published / Required fields are marked *

Skip to toolbar